I will admit to being stymied by the heated debates about mixed-gender public toilets. For those of us who travel, we know that there are so many places in the world with mixed-gender toilets. Sometimes one walks in past men urinating in order to reach a private stall. Of course, in other locations there is a stalwart bifurcation, a clear separation between men’s and women’s toilets.

I am reminded of a beautiful and wise concept that I learned about as a child. Growing up with Diné, or Navajo, friends in northern Arizona, I was privileged to learn so very much from their experiences, their families, and their culture. One of the transformational ideas for me was that of “two spirits”—that individuals can be both man and woman. Traditionally, this is a blessing, an honor. I can sure see why! Access to differing world views, and a broader emotional, cognitive, and expressive repertoire would be just some of the assets a “two spirit” gender might provide.

Across the planet this fluid or blended gender concept has many terms, some of which you can see in Independent Lens’ interactive “Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures.” From the comments, it appears there remains a need for significant tweaking of the information provided, but it sure is a helpful start to a review of world beliefs and practices on fluid or non-binary gender identification. I urge you to take a look and do some clicking and reading!

Be sure also to subscribe to Cultural Detective Online or license the PDF package and spend some time with our newly updated Cultural Detective Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. It contains a wealth of useful information, and the approach helps us learn to partner across sexual orientations and gender identifications. It is absolutely one of the best resources of its kind. I am so proud of the international team that put it together.

Growing up in the USA in the 1950s, as I did, it was “clearly understood” that there were two genders: boys and girls. So it never crossed my mind until I was much older that perhaps the binary world of gender was not so binary. And if one allows—even intellectually—for that possibility, you can begin to see how difficult daily life can be for transgender people, individuals who do not identify with the gender to which they were assigned at birth.

The more one thinks about it, the more complex being transgender becomes. Take a seemingly simple thing like filling out a standardized form: what do you do if you aren’t Miss, Mrs., Ms., or Mr.? This is the dilemma that opens Jacob Tobia’srecent piece in The Guardian, which I highly recommend. He writes of the difficulties of not having a gender-neutral option available in so many daily situations. As I read his article, I began to realize the privilege given to “cisgendered” individuals—those who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Tobia writes:

Growing up, I assumed that the only way to have a gender-neutral title would be if I got a PhD and could make everyone call me “Dr”. For most of my life, I didn’t realize that there was another way out of the “Mr/Ms” dichotomy. That changed when, in my junior year of college, a favorite professor of mine introduced me to an artist named Justin Vivian Bond who used a gender-neutral term that I had never heard of before: “Mx.”

What?! Yup, that’s not a typo: the word is “Mx.” When I read this article, I thought everyone else must already know about it, since it is now included in OxfordDictionaries.com: “A title used before a person’s surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female.”

Judging by the reaction of the few people I have mentioned it to, this term is not in universal usage, at least not in my tiny little corner of the world. However, it seems a great addition to the English language for those who do not self-identify with binary gender assignments.

“…on 28 August 2015…That day, OxfordDictionaries.com – created by the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary – added Mx to the dictionary. Seemingly overnight, Mx went from an underground, somewhat obscure term, to an official part of the English language.”

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